Further to my post yesterday, a reader writes:
Your article leaves out one very salient fact: Due to the French insistence on outlandish reparations after WWI, the Germans were saddled with unpayable debt which resulted in a huge inflation during the 20's and an economic downturn. The US prospered in the 20's (as did most of the rest of the western world) and therefore entered the 30's prosperous and contented.
Germany therefore had really two decades of economic depression versus the one suffered by the rest of the world. The German people, after losing a war were turned from being economically well off to being ravaged by lousy economic conditions for two decades. Even the best of men may turn the wrong way under those circumstances.
I have always felt that France was the most responsible nation for the German onslaught in Europe. Before Napoleon, Germany was a mix of different states which generally got along with their neighbors. When Napoleon went on his rampages he generally had to cross German territory to reach his goal. In those days most armies lived a great deal off the land and this was German land.
My parents immigrated from Germany in the 20's and I can honestly state that I never heard a harsh world about Jews from them or their German born friends. But to a person, they basically hated the French. When I grew up and learned the history of the two nations I began to understand why.
The above certainly reminds us of one important factor in explaining the rise of German Nazism. There were of course various factors involved -- including the personal political genius of Hitler himself. My purpose yesterday was simply to point out how a basic theme in conservative thinking was an important part of the total explanation.
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ELSEWHERE
Further to my comments on the misleading account of black IQ by Malcolm Gladwell, it seems that Jonah Goldberg has taken an interest in the matter too. It seems that someone has even got Gladwell to do a grudging retraction of one of his slurs. See here
The WSJ is now a great Australian newspaper: "News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has finally achieved his long-held ambition of owning The Wall Street Journal, one of the world's great newspapers, and ending more than 100 years of ownership by the Bancroft family. Confirmation of Mr Murdoch's successful $US5.2 billion takeover of the Journal's owner, Dow Jones & Co, came after an historic, 30-minute shareholder meeting and vote at New York's Marriott Hotel, which is appropriately located just near Wall Street on the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Just under 60.3 per cent of Dow Jones investors approved the merger, with 78 per cent of common shares and 54 per cent of super-voting shares - mostly held by the divided Bancroft family - allocated in favour of the deal. Later, standing on a makeshift stage made out of four boxes of copying paper at Dow Jones's head office, Mr Murdoch - flanked by two trusted Australian lieutenants, new Dow Jones chief executive Les Hinton and new WSJ publisher Robert Thomson - reassured journalists about the company's future."
Bible realistic: "The ten Plagues of Egypt recounted in the Bible and which caused Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves go free were nothing more than natural "population imbalances" caused by environmental factors, a leading scientist has claimed.... The "rivers of blood" could have been caused by heavy rainfall on baked soil, leading to sediment-rich water flowing into the Nile from tributaries where the underlying soil and rocks are red. Egyptians often spoke of the "red lands" surrounding the fertile, "black lands" they occupied. The sediments would also have killed the fish, as described in the Bible, he says. The plague of frogs could have been migrating frogs, or the sudden appearance of the froglike Spadefoot toads from hiding places in damp undersoil after a sudden rainfall. Similarly, the plague of lice could have been merely the sudden hatching of lice throughout Egypt after rain that followed unusually hot and dry weather. The description of swarms of flies match the behaviour of dancing midges, which can sometimes be so dense that livestock have to be taken indoors to avoid asphyxiation, he says. Again, unusual weather conditions could have led them to the Nile. An abundance of biting insects would also have led to the "pestilence" that caused the death of the country's cattle. Similarly, the boils on the human population could have been caused by insect bites. The "fiery hail" could have been the large hailstones accompanied by ball lightning that sometimes appears during severe, dramatic storms. The locust swarms would also have been caused by severe environmental conditions, and a dense storm could also have produced the darkening of the skies described in the Bible."
Britain: Muslim car thieves: "Five members of a multimillion-pound "car-ringing" gang, who stole luxury cars after trawling expensive areas of London were sentenced yesterday . The 34 stolen vehicles included Porsches, Mercedes, BMWs, Range Rovers, Toyota Land Cruisers and an Aston Martin. Southwark Crown Court was told that the thieves videoed themselves at the wheel of high-powered cars on their mobile phones. One clip showed 21-year-old Yusef Kaduji behind the wheel of a Mercedes McLaren worth 300,000 pounds. Imran Ganchi, a father-of-two from Ilford, who masterminded the operation, was jailed for six years; Kaduji, from East London, got two years; Hameed Nawaz, 31, of Luton, received three years; and Shazad Hussain, 31, of Mosely, Birmingham, four years.Shakeel Shoukat, 21, also of Forest Gate, was given a 12-month sentence suspended for two years."
Israel getting worried: "A senior Israeli official has fiercely criticized U.S. President George Bush's administration for the way it has dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue. The official said that the administration was not doing what was required of it to create an international coalition and wide agreement to pressure Iran over its nuclear program. Criticism from senior members of Israel's political echelon with regard to U.S. policy on the matter is rare. The official mainly spoke out against Bush's failure to enlist support from China, Russia and, to a certain extent, India, for increasing pressure on Iran and North Korea. According to the official, the Bush administration has insisted on stressing matters such as human rights in China and its policy on Taiwan, and as a result, has neglected to gain its support in the struggle against Iran."
Yes Minister: British bureaucrats help PRESERVE freedom of information: "At the turn of the year, Government forces, led by Lord Falconer of Thoroton, then Lord Chancellor, appeared determined to press ahead with new rules that would stop the media and campaign groups from making costly and embarrassing requests for information. New documents released under the Freedom of Information Act now provide a clearer understanding of why the Government got cold feet. Responses to its own consultation paper published last year include submissions from FOI officers who show themselves to be less than enthusiastic about the idea of “blanket aggregation”, whereby a financial cap would be put on the amount of money that could be spent on complying with FOI requests made by individuals from within the same organisation. Government agencies were even less enthusiastic. In its detailed response, Transport for London noted that the consultation paper did not present any evidence that “burdensome FOI requests are a significant or extensive problem outside of central government”. [Embarrassing political info is no skin off the bureaucrats' nose but processing requests does provide jobs for them]
For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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